Ridley Scott opened up about why he made the decision to cast Christian Bale for the role of Moses in the upcoming film Exodus: Gods and Kings.
When the first trailer and posters of Scott's latest film dropped, which showed a decidedly white cast, consisting of Bale, Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver and others, some questioned the move.
The trailer so infuriated people that a Care2 petition was started up asking Scott to stop racist casting. The petition managed to snag 16,400 signatures.
While there might be some in the cast that aren't white, much of the main cast is and that starts at the forefront with Bale as Moses and while Scott sidestepped any mention of controversy, he did open up about why he felt the Dark Knight star was the perfect to play Moses.
Scott said he met with Bale several years back and they talked about doing a movie together, but nothing came together until the Blade Runner director began looking for who to bring on for Exodus.
"It wasn't until five years later when I was thinking about the idea of Exodus and Moses being this kind of larger than life character who, at the same time, has to be played definitively as a very real person," Scott told Yahoo. "I thought of Christian and I knew he was the right actor for the role."
He added that, "We cast major actors from different ethnicities to reflect this diversity of culture [in Egypt], from Iranians to Spaniards to Arabs. There are many different theories about the ethnicity of the Egyptian people,
and we had a lot of discussions about how to best represent the culture."
image courtesy of Famous/ACE/INFphoto.com
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